BEEM: Evidence Based Medicine Worth Spreading

BEEM is a knowledge translation/dissemination project. It was started in 2005 by Dr. Andrew Worster of McMaster University, the home of EBM. The BEEM project provides up to 12 hrs of high quality, clinically relevant continuing medical education. It has no financial or other affiliation with any commercial organization. Check out this BEEM YouTube video to learn more.

BEEM Mission: To provide Emergency Medicine practitioners with the best clinical evidence to optimize patient care.

BEEM Vision: To be the most valid, reliable, and unbiased global source of current clinically-relevant patient-centered medical knowledge for practitioners.

BEEM Process: There are close to 3,000 articles published every day. BEEM via Health Information Research Unit at McMaster University screens electronic databases of about 200 journals each month. While most articles do not make it past this point, 10-20 articles are emergency medicine related. These articles are then organized in Survey Monkey. The survey includes the title of the paper and authors conclusions.

The EM related articles are sent to over 100 BEEM raters. These are front line emergency doctors just like you. Raters are asked to assume that the results of this article are valid. They are then asked to rate clinically how important the paper is to their own practice. A seven point likert scale is used to rate the manuscripts from 1=Useless information …to…7= This is a “must know” for Emergency Physicians. Again, many articles to not make it past this stage. Only those highly rated papers are appraised by BEEM faculty.

Standardized EBM tools are used to create a critical appraisal and BEEM bottom line. These critical reviews are then provided to you so you can provide your patients with the BEST care.

We are not aware of any other CME product seeks pre-appraisal input from the front line EM provider. This process which BEEM developed can filter the data and can distinguish the signal from all the noise to find those few practice changing articles. BEEM has validated this rating tool and published the results (Worster et al. Acad Emerg Med. 2011 November; 18(11): 1193–1200).

BEEM Testimonials:

“If you want to be an up to date emergency physician and could only attend one CME event per year this is the one that I would recommend.” Professor Ian Rogers Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital University of Western Australia

“Best Bang for the Buck of any EM Conference!” Dr Crispen Richards Western University